J. spent some time in Norway for an Erasmus, and at 2012 New Year’s Eve (that is, from December 31, 2011 to January 1, 2012) people he met there came to Barcelona. I joined the party, and thanks to that I met Sigurd, one of the Norwegian guys who came and who spent some more days at Barcelona. It was he who introduced me the blog of which he is the editor, Rostrum, and suggested me to write an article, and another one later on. Now I am a contributor, and I am preparing another article, and a possible idea for a would-be article.

I have never been given limits to article’s length. And see, one begins this way and ends up writing texts such as my second article, of about three thousand and five hundred words. Is it a long text? The question should be if it “feels” long when read. In Rostrum they value quality. As Sigurd told me, “we don’t go tabloid”. The other day I was trying to explain him what Rostrum means to me. And today, talking with N., I think that I have found the appropriate words. To write on Rostrum is to write on a place knowing that you will get read and not looked at as if you were an alien came from another planet. I feel understood.

I wonder whether such a project could be started here. I mean, if I suggested to people I know to make a blog like that. No, impossible. It’s not necessary a bad thing: everyone has his or her own interests. But there is a question that disturbs me. I cannot answer it, because even being a Catalan as I am, I don’t know “all” Catalan youth (and I haven’t conducted the required research to being able to talk about it even in generic terms), and the only thing I know about Norwegian youth is what Sigurd, with some of his friends, began. And the question is: what are the differences between the worries of Catalan young people and those of Norwegian young people? And those differences, whatever they be, what say to us? What lessons might be learnt?

Ah, just one last thing about writing on Rostrum. Given my ignorance about Norwegian language, I write there in English. And I’m pretty happy to see that I manage to write fluently enough. But perhaps it is time for me to begin learning Norwegian…